Technology and how we use it to achieve business goals and objectives is constantly changing. However, the majority of IT service providers are still tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) that are outdated.

Measuring the success of IT on things like up time, meeting SLAs, targets of 99.99% availability and number of tickets resolved, while still important to track internally, aren’t necessarily relevant to C-suite goals.

99.99% uptime, often marketed as a unique selling point for most IT companies, isn’t a marker of success in this day and age, it’s just what’s expected. Adam Tallinger, vice president at healthcare IT consulting company Impact Advisors says, “You don’t necessarily cheer your plumber every time water comes out of the faucet. You for sure will call if you turn on the tap and it doesn’t come out.”

Uptime can be very useful, but only if tied to a result of the business. Availability is, of course, very important, but what people care about is how it impacts SLAs, or customer satisfaction when relating to website downtime for example.

Likewise, a lot of IT services companies take the perspective on a project’s budget and schedule adherence as the sole measure of it’s success. The issue here is that this view gives no insight into whether or not the completion of the project caused any business benefit.

Brent Rasmussen, CIO of Carrington Mortgage Holdings, says the business doesn’t fully benefit from an IT project until it has been fully adopted, business processes have changed, and it’s measurable and transparent.

He views staying within budget, like uptime, as “table stakes” for IT and says all your IT infrastructure layer needs to run all the time while being scalable and dependable so as not to impede the business.

So if these metrics and KPIs no longer prove the success of IT, what exactly should we be measuring as IT leaders? This will likely be different depending on what’s important to the specific business, which not only varies from company to company, but will also vary over time within the same organisation.

Organisational goals always change over time. One year the business’ primary goal is rapid expansion, the next year it could be profit maximisation followed by brand building. The only real way to decide on the relevant KPIs that IT should measure is to talk with business leaders and users about what matters to them.

How to discover what businesses really need

Consultation

User satisfaction is a metric that business leaders consider vitally important. Often times IT organisations will send out a mass survey with little preparation to users asking for support to gauge satisfaction.

Adam Tallinger, vice president at healthcare IT consulting company Impact Advisors says this is a mistake as it’s “too much data, too much variability among the people you’re contacting at a specific point in time.”

He suggests, instead of sending out a blanket survey, to build relationships with organisational and departmental leaders and discuss with them ahead of time how we’re going to measure ourselves in the future. This allows them to give direct feedback, as well as prepares them for your survey in the future after a relationship is formed.

“Why” your way to more insight

The biggest issues tend to arise when business leaders don’t openly communicate the organisation’s specific goals and objectives to the IT service provider.

For example, a business leader might only convey to IT that external customer user experience needs improvement. The reason behind the emphasis on customer experience might be that the business is attempting to increase its customer base, but frustrated customers tend to leave which causes churn—this isn’t always shared with IT.

The new approach requires digging deeper and asking why this matters, often multiple times to find the real business reason.

You care about availability—why?

Because users are happier

Why does that matter to the bussines?

When they’re happier they spend more time on site and make more purchases.

Having a deeper level of understanding of the goals and motivations behind business decisions can often lead to a better way to achieve specific business goals with IT.

Tying metrics to business results

Brent Rasmussen, CIO of Carrington Mortgage Holdings, spends time with clients and departments one on one to determine what projects IT will do for them, along with projected benefits to result from the projects.

This helps IT services to track the relevant time and resources spent on projects to maintain budgets. The new approach to IT partnership also determines whether the desired business results are achieved.

Through bench-marking previous projects we’re able to look at new solutions against baseline metrics to track effectiveness.

Choosing the right KPIs are important and IT leaders are ready to take their place as partners to business leaders to help guide their organisations into successful and secure digital futures.

If you’re serious about driving business growth and improving organisational productivity, talk with us today about how a partnership with eStorm can benefit your business.

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (07) 3120 0640

Imagine you’re going about your work day, everything’s humming along and you’re getting stuff done. All of a sudden, you run into a roadblock with your Office 365 or Outlook and your productivity is halted in its tracks. It might be that you’ve run into a totally new behaviour or bug that you’ve never seen before, or maybe you’re not entirely sure if you’re using a particular tool in the most efficient way. What’s your next step?

That’s where we enter the picture. We’re here to help you and we want to ensure we’re delivering as valuable of a service to you as possible. Regardless of how you choose to reach out to us—whether by phone or email—there are certain pieces of information that our Support Engineers love seeing in a ticket. These are the bits of information that help us to address your case in the most complete and efficient manner possible.

Subject Line

The subject line is important because it uniquely identifies and conveys your issue so that we know where we’ll need to start troubleshooting. The perfect subject line is a clear and general description of the issue that has occurred, which also includes what machine or device you’re using.

Example: Outlook not sending emails on Mac

Body

Greeting & name

It’s always nice to kick things off with a friendly hello and a name so we know who we’re helping.

Computer name or number (if known)

This information won’t be applicable to all businesses and if you don’t know it that’s perfectly fine as well.

Machine / device

Including what type of machine—such as Mac or PC—or device you’re experiencing the issue on allows us to assign the right Support Engineer to deliver the best result.

Description of the issue with steps you might have tried

Information will vary from case to case, but a good way to approach this part of the ticket is to describe what you expected to happen and then what actually happened. The expectation part is likely to be more detailed than what actually happened, but that’s okay! We’re looking for whatever general details you can provide on the behaviour you’re seeing and on steps you may have already taken to troubleshoot the issue.

Example: Marketing is trying to send an email to salespeople when a contact is assigned to them. All of the other salespeople are receiving emails fine, but they aren’t arriving for me. I have checked in the SPAM folder, but the emails aren’t there either. Why aren’t these emails coming through?

Whenever possible, our team looks for specific examples of the obstacle you’re running into. If we can find evidence of that issue at hand (or if we can recreate the behaviour you’re seeing), that gives us a great starting point for troubleshooting. The more specific you can get, the better. If you’re submitting an email ticket, consider attaching screenshots.

Contact number 

Including a contact number for our Support Engineer to contact you during the resolution process helps with timely resolutions, particularly in certain instances where remotely accessing your computer may be necessary.

When we put all the information together into a single ticket and finish it with a focused question, we can see a full picture of the case. With that information, the Support Engineer is able to accurately and effectively address and rectify the issue quickly.

At eStorm, we’re constantly looking for ways to pre-empt potential user questions, but there will always be a need for a live support channel to handle these unexpected roadblocks. By using the above advice you can ensure that you get back into action as quickly as possible.

IT Support Services Brisbane

Headquartered in Brisbane, we provide tailored IT support services to suit your specific requirements. No matter the size of your organisation, our solutions include a variety of services that are critical to the successful delivery of business IT support.

Our Managed IT Support Services include Managed IT Services, Outsource Your IT Department, Mobile Device Management, IT Consultancy, Corporate Apple Services, Project Services, IT Audit and Review, Virtual CIO Servicesand Production Studio and Design.

If you’d like any further information, or to find out exactly how we can help your business – please feel free to call us on (07) 3120 0640 or email us at [email protected]

If you are located outside of Brisbane, eStorm can still help you.
Sydney: (02) 9188 5148
Melbourne: (03) 9088 6431

In need of our other IT support and managed services?

We specialise in Managed Cloud Services, IT Support Services, Managed Network Services, Business Telephony, Hardware and Software Procurement and Education Services.